Page 44 - Social Media Marketing

Social Business

Operations Marketing

c h a p t e r 1 : ╇ S ocial M edia and C ustomer E ngagement╇ ■ Customers

Figure€1.3╇â•T‰ he Marketing-Operations Connection

The connection between the disciplines of marketing and operations and social
22 media—and in particular the conversations, ratings, photos, and more that circulate

on the Social Web—is this: The majority of conversations that involve a brand, prod-
uct, or service are those that arise out of a difference between what was expected and
what was delivered or experienced. After all, we tend to talk more about what was
not expected than what was expected. In this simple relationship between expectation
and actual experience, the folly of trying to control conversations on the Social Web
becomes clear: Conversations on the Social Web are the artifacts of the work product
of someone else—a blogger, a customer, a voter, etc.—who typically doesn’t report to
the organization desiring to gain control! You can’t control something that isn’t yours
to control.

Instead, it is by changing the product design, the service policy or similar in
order to align the experience with the expectation or to ensure the replicable delivery of
“delight,” for example, as Zappos does when it upgrades shipping to “Next Day” for
no other reason than to delightfully surprise a customer. At Zappos, it’s not just a story
of an occasional surprise upgrade that got blown out of proportion in the blogosphere.
When bloggers—and customers—rave about Zappos, it’s for good reason: Zappos cre-
ates sufficient moments of delight that many people have experienced them and gone
on to create and share content about them It’s expensive—and Zappos isn’t always the
lowest cost shoe retailer. But in the end, delight wins. Zappos set out to build a billion-
dollar business in 10 years. As a team, they did it in eight. Ultimately, it is the subse-
quent customer experiences—built or reshaped with direct customer input—which will
drive future conversations and set your business or organization on the path to success.

Connect Your Team

Social media marketing is in many ways a precursor to social business. Social media
marketing is most effective when the entire business is responsible for the experiences